Thursday 21 May 2026, 2.30pm - 4pm
Learning Centre (Room 00.018), Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
All welcome
This event has the double aim to provide interested medical students with an example of the type of activities and of reflection that Medical Humanities can offer them, and to listen to their interests and priorities in view of developing a Medical Humanities program of events dedicated to them.
The first part of the workshop will be focused on humanities-based reflection on interpreting clinical notes. Medicine modernizes, patients today are increasingly able to access the clinical notes that physicians write of them. Faced with brief clinical encounters and a gap of accessible sources of medical knowledge, patients often face barriers understanding their own notes. As AI tools proliferate, many are turning to AI for medical answers. An accessible framework for patients to interpret clinical notes is thus needed.
This interdisciplinary workshop will feature scholars from diverse disciplines briefly presenting an interpretation of psychiatry clinical notes informed by their discipline’s methodologies. At the same time, it will also welcome participants of diverse lived and professional perspectives to exchange and discuss in small-group workshops. The workshop’s aim is to work towards synthesizing a framework for patients to better understand their own experiences accessing healthcare, through understanding the structure of their clinical notes.
At the end of the workshop, there will be time for a more general discussion with medical students about their interests and expectations around the medical humanities, and we will gather suggestions from them to develop a dedicated program of events.
Medical Humanities Research Hub, TORCH Research Hubs
